Electroacoustic Music Studies Network
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3-7 June 2008, Maison de la recherche, 28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris
EARS Full Text Translation Plan by Zhang Ruibo (Mungo)
Abstract: Translation is never a straightforward job; rather it is a creative progression, especially on terminology translations from a different language phylum, for instance, from English to Chinese. After having learned that the Italian translation is almost ready to go online, and that the Greek and Portuguese translations have been started for EARS, it seems an obvious next step that a Chinese version should be added. This is an important step for the adoption of EARS into China. It is also a compulsory job for CHEARS (China Electroacoustic Recourses Survey) which was proposed last year as my master’s thesis. Hopefully, Chinese will be the first language to fully translate EARS in Asia and will turn CHEARS from a simple EA glossary for bibliography collection purposes into a professional project for wider effect in China.
Since Chinese is one of the oldest languages in the world, a complicated rule system creates difficulties when optimizing the meaning of characters along with good pronunciation. However, that is why this is an interesting issue that creates a hot discussion. One third of the EARS glossary was translated last year. Some of these already have a precise Chinese translation; some of them have to be given a new translation, the rest of them are almost impossible to find proper words for in Chinese. Many translation gaps still exist. So, a translation progress report for EARS will be the main task of this article. Furthermore, as one of the translators for Chinese version of Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads, I will coordinate the subject index of the CMT book with terminology from EARS.